Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock

Mary Warnock, Baroness Warnock (14 April 1924-20 March 2019) was an English philosopher and a member of the House of Lords from 6 February 1985 to 1 June 2015, best-known for her 1978 report on special educational needs.

Biography
Helen Mary Wilson was born in Winchester, Hampshire, England on 14 April 1924, and her father died before her birth; her mother, the daughter of a successful German immigrant banker and financier, was wealthy from an inherited fortune. Wilson graduated from Oxford in 1948 and married a year later, and she was a fellow and tutor in philosophy at St. Hugh's College, Oxford from 1949 to 1966, rising in the ranks of the academia. From 1963 to 1970, she published three books on philosophy, and she went on to become Headmistress at the Oxford High School for Girls from 1966 to 1972 and then a research fellow at Lady Margaret Hall from 1972 to 1976. She published a major 1978 report on special educational needs, advocating that special needs students be integrated into normal schools; however, she warned against excessive inclusion from the start, and she later came to oppose integration.

Warnock was a supporter of the Conservative Party, calling herself a "dripping wet Conservative" who loved the ideas of a landed aristocracy, hunting, time-honored hierarchies, cathedrals, and old-fashioned scholardom. During the late 1970s, she helped the Conservatives adopt neoliberal policies by introducing the book Anarchy, State, and Union to Keith Joseph during the Conservatives' time in opposition; the book argued that the government should only intervene to protect citizens against force, theft, and fraud, and allow for individual choice and market forces to determine the rest. In 1979, Tory Home Secretary William Whitelaw asked Warnock to chair a Home Office advisory committee on animal experiments, and, in 1984, she published a report on embryology. From 1984 to 1991, she served as Mistress of Girton College, Cambridge, and she was also created a life peer in the House of Lords in 1985, serving until her retirement in 2015. She died in 2019 at the age of 94.